Evaluation for Books Order System

Now that I have completed the system, I think that the database is professional and allows the school to complete all the tasks that they need to do in order to produce orders for books. The forms that I’ve created meet a very high standard, as they allow for all relevant data to be entered through various easy methods, text boxes or combo (look-up) boxes, and also provide a consistent colour scheme, supported by the reports. I would have liked to advance my system, by potentially inserting some macros or passwords, to assist with the security of the database. I would've liked to advance on the colour scheme, as most of the colours used are one solid colour – blends might help the professionalism of the database to increase.

The Rapid Development Method of prototyping that I used was definitely the right choice in my opinion, for this type of database, as I could start with a system that literally contained the bare minimum of features, but constantly keep adding new features in later versions. This allowed me to easily track the progress of my database, and due to the Functional Specification I created, allowed the system to be constructed very quickly. Despite the Prototyping approach been the right option for me, I would’ve liked to experiment with Phased approach, as this would have resulted in errors been erased. An example of an error that occurred in my system was a button that I assigned with the wrong feature (Last Record in Order Form) – this error wasn’t noticed until the third version was released.

Personally, I think that Microsoft Access was the best application to use, due to the number of forms and reports that were needed. These could be easily constructed in Microsoft Access due to the query feature available. I also needed to produce a high quality user-interface for the financial administrator to use, therefore ensuring the interface was professional was a major goal to me. I knew that before construction of the system began, Microsoft Access produced high quality reports and reports were stated as a major requirement in the ICA document. Potentially, Zoho Creator maps, graphs and charts features could have been useful, as these could have shown the money each teacher had spent each year. Despite this, the coding would have proved difficult to assign to this database.